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About Miranda Culp

At the end of 2017, I lost my shitty job and a small miracle occurred. While I feverishly sent out resumes and heard nothing but crickets, a friend introduced me to a woman who had just finished a novel and was in need of an editor. Evelyne Michaut is a French-American mom of two kids living in the Bay Area. We clicked right away.

She was in the process of getting a divorce, her third, actually. Shy about this manuscript, she knew it was time to let some other eyes see it. I braced myself for first-time-writer syndrome, but I was happily surprised at how good she was. The novel was a spec-fiction book with a decidedly matriarchal flavor, but she was struggling with one character in the story – the antagonist.

Halfway through my first read, she contacted me and said, “I think I have to write the real story first.” Then she sent me a stripped down version of her memoir. And this was really where the motherload resided.

Watching Evelyne unfold this memoir was fascinating as a writer and editor, and excruciating as a woman. The Harvey Weinstein allegations had just surfaced, and the #MeToo movement popped like a boil. We had many conversations where we marveled at the timing.

Evelyne was in her 40s when she unearthed a deep gash of sexual trauma in her own background, a childhood scar so horrific that her brain had lovingly plunged the knowledge deep into her subconscious in order to protect her and keep her functioning. This trauma had informed her whole life without her knowing it, manifesting in physical pain and erratic romantic choices.

There was a truly astounding moment when we were discussing the abuse itself and we were trying to figure out how to bring the reader into it without forcing her to relive it gratuitously. I suggested she go back into her journals to see if anything surfaced. Sure enough, decades ago she had recounted dreams, bizarre sexual nightmares she’d had long before the awareness of the trauma surfaced. It was like her young adult mind was trying to tell her in the gentlest way possible, that the scar was still there, weeping.

I had never worked on a project like this before, and I thank God that we met often in real life and relied on video chat to discuss the work. I’d be thinking mechanically about how to best express something and see the expression on her face change. We would bring the conversation away from the text for a moment, and give her some deep breaths before continuing. She is also a very clear communicator who speaks the poetry of spirituality, and so while our metaphysics were very distinct, this gave us a common vocabulary to unpack the narrative.

What Evelyne did took incredible guts. She had to be unapologetic in telling the truth, and this meant saying some unpleasant things about some of the people close to her. She was also able to find humor in really dark places, poke a little fun at herself, “pushing into the cracks,” as Leanoard Cohen would put it.

I was so lucky to work on this book with Evelyne; she took some really fucking rotten lemons and made Beyoncé-grade lemonade. The Goddess Guide to Divorce: a Memoircomes out on Valentine’s Day as a gesture of self-love, and a signal to women and men that healing is the first courageous step in making love possible.

It was Los Angeles, the summer of 1995. My best friend Dottie and I were bumming around our parents’ houses in the San Fernando Valley after half-hearted efforts at city and state college. We had nothing to do, no money, no jobs, and our primary form of transport was my teal blue 1977 Volkswagen Bug.

On a day like any other day where we had scraped together enough change for coffee at the diner, Dottie said, “We should go on The Price is Right.”

A quick aside here: when we were still in high school, our drama teacher funded our competitions by forcing all her classes to go to TV tapings. For pilots and new shows that weren’t yet popular, studios would pay for warm bodies in bulk. By the time I was 18, I had seen more failed family sitcoms live than any one person should.

“Game shows won’t pay you to be in the audience, will they?”

“No, but my friend won 10,000 dollars in the Showcase Showdown,” Dottie told me. “Well, she actually won 20,000, but you have to pay half for taxes. But all she had to do was spin the wheel.”

“I want to go.” Paul said. While casting a grim eye around my zombified literature class at city college, a guy with leopard print hair turned around and waved at me. It was like the whole room was black and white and Paul was technicolor. He worked at Urban Outfitters and the three of us had become a triad, going to raves and scouring the thrift stores together.

“We have to get in line super early in the morning,” Dottie was now planning our get-rich-quick scheme. “We should start watching the show and go next week.”

This sounded so much better than getting a job. So we went to work watching TV, tuning in every morning to CBS and calling each other after to analyze.

“We should probably dress really conservatively,” I think both of us said this really pointedly to Paul, indicating to him that he should try to act less gay, a truth I am totally ashamed of today. But at the time it was true; the people who got onto The Price is Right stage were types. There was usually one person of color, that would be Dottie, one young Christian lady (I was hoping to pass for that) and a blue-blooded American male (Paul?). We had already decided that if any of us won anything, we’d split it three ways.

It was 3:30 am when I rolled out of bed, put on my brown dress and saddle shoes (I cannot believe now that this is the outfit I decided on) and picked up Dottie. We scooped up Paul and arrived at the CBS studio parking lot at 4:30am.

“Remember, we have to be enthusiastic,” Dottie coached.

“It’s my dream to be on The Price is Right!” Paul chanted with balled fists. If memory serves, we were actually legitimately pumped up when we first got there even though on an obvious level, we knew it was ridiculous.

A line was already forming down one side of the building, and despite having studied the show for the last four days, we were shocked. The parking lot was filled with RVs that had plates from the Midwest and the South. Women with big gold crosses around their necks and storm cloud hairdos had homemade tee-shirts that said, “In Bob We Trust,” and “Come on Down!”

The Price is Right taped two shows per day, and so the studio handed out tickets in two batches, one am and one pm. We missed the am tickets completely, and so we would have to wait until the 1:30 taping. It was now 5:15am.

So we walked down the street to Canter’s and spent the last of our money on coffee with infinite refills and latkes. Hours went by. The inane stream of late 80’s hits filtering over us was the torment of the dentist office. When Hootie and the Blowfish came on, Dottie started making up alternate lyrics in a perfect imitation of the lead singer’s self-conscious growl.

“Got up so early this morning, thought I was gonna be on TV

Guess I was wrong, girl, because it wasn’t that easy.

Sitting here in the deli, drinking coffee and waitin’ around.

maybe I’ll meet Bob Barker, the next time around.

Whoa-oh. Maybe I’ll meet him, the next time around.”

Paul and I were craughing (laughing so hard you cry), drawing the ire of the waiters. We finally got the sense we were about to get kicked out of Canter’s, so we paid and kept walking, wandering into the antique shops on La Brea where the cheapest thing for sale was $100.

We found a thrift store with a long couch and took a nap. Another 80s song by Suzie Q came on and it was Paul’s turn to reinvent the lyrics:

“Two of Hearts,

Two Hearts that Eat for One,

I need food, I need food!”

It was getting too hot to be outside, but this was long before the days of Starbucks and there was nowhere to sit and chill except the restaurants.

We were all yawning when we decided that we’d go back to the studio early. Then we stood in line for another hour. Finally, the doors opened and the studio people started shuttling us through. It was stop-start-stop-start and we were all given a number to wear on our chests.

Someone explained to us that we were going to “meet the director and tell him a little about ourselves.” Slowly, the line snaked through a room where a large man with a bushy mustache and dark sunglasses sat in a director’s chair. He asked each person their name, where they were from, and why they wanted to be on The Price is Right. As each person answered, the director would lean over and whisper something in an assistant’s ear. She would write something down on a clipboard.

It was Paul’s turn and he recited the line he’d be practicing, “It’s my dream to be on The Price is Right!”

“I like the way you dream,” said the director and mumbled to his assistant. He said it in a way that suggested: “keep dreaming.”

From there, we were finally led into the soundstage. The set, which looks like a traveling carnival even on TV, appeared even more propped up and barely hanging together.

The audience was geared up though, and so were we. Having studied the insert ads in the newspaper for the last week, we were super confident we knew what a new dryer costed. All we needed was for our name to be called.

A warm-up guy came out and ginned up the audience, talking about Bob Barker like we were about to meet the crown prince of an important country.

“Are you ready to meet Bob?” the guy squawked.

“Yeah!” the audience screamed.

And then there he was, the man himself, hair and teeth as white a cloud, tan skin, a tailored suit and the long, skinny microphone. He gave everyone a good look at him and then immediately, Bob set to work openly mocking his audience.

“You’ve come from all over, you sir, where are you from?”

“Oklahoma,” the thrilled guy in the front said.

“And what are you hoping to win today?”

“A new boat,” the guy said.

“I tell you, if I had a nickel for every guy I meet who lives in a landlocked state and wants a new boat,” the audience roared as Bob continued, “I’d be a rich man, I mean, I am a rich man.”

I remember wincing and Dottie saying under her breath, “don’t make a face, the camera might see you.” Bob continued to coax people’s dreams of dollars and name brands out of them, only to make cutting jokes at their expense. No one seemed to notice.

Every episode of The Price is Right had a car or some sort of vehicle as the big prize. But what a lot of people don’t know is that when you win a luxury automobile, you instantly owe taxes on the full value of your “prize.” Many people have to surrender it.

The shoot took over two hours, the music repeating over and over, obese guys in overalls jumping out of their seats and wobbling down to the stage. Every time someone’s name was called, we had to bash our hands and grin like organ grinder monkeys with cymbals.

When the last round of callouts happened and it was clear no one else was going to get picked, an older man in the back raised his hand and Barker jabbed a finger at him.

“Bob, can I ‘come on down’ and shake your hand?” Bob conceded and the audience clapped.

I don’t remember anyone winning. As we left the soundstage, staff handed us postcards with Bob’s picture in the classic pose with his arms folded over his chest.

“My hands hurt from all that clapping,” Paul noted.

“That sucked,” Dottie exclaimed brightly. We were so tired and had to battle rush hour but we laughed anyway.

“We’re desperate,” Dottie confessed, “we’re all so desperate. Those people save their vacation time and drive out here so they can see Bob Fucking Barker in person. That guy who asked to shake Barker’s hand? It was like he couldn’t leave without having some story to tell.”

It was easier to laugh at all those people since we only had a 30-minute drive. We lost nothing but a quarter tank of gas and an afternoon among endless summer afternoons.

But I remember also feeling hung over the way that miners must have felt during the gold rush when they realized that reports of gold lying all over the ground had been greatly exaggerated.

It made us feel moderately better to pretend to be monkeys bidding on appliances all the way home.

Miranda Culp is a freelance author, writer, and editor in Sacramento, CA. Her short story collection The Brunt is available on Amazon.

I used to be in a band, actually several bands: old-timey jazz for swing dancers, a Django-style band, a big band chorus for a bandleader that wrote Frank Zappa/Mel Torme mashups with a nautical theme. An electronica duo that joined forces with some other musicians and became a noise collective that would regularly gather in a really shitty practice space in the SOMA, get hammered on Starbucks Doubleshot Frappucinos and Jim Beam, and bash away at instruments and computers. I also formed my own trio and cut a thoroughly decent five tune demo with three really talented jazz/rock musicians, one of whom plays guitar for Rogue Wave now.

Good times.

I stopped being in bands to get married and move to the country and have a baby but I never stopped writing songs. I wrote an Ellington-inspired dirge when my dog died. I switched genres to kid-appropriate country lullabies for a few years after the baby. I wrote a foolishly idealistic song about the book Life of Pi, attempted to get into the hands of the music producer when the movie was in process.

Now that I live in Sacramento, I realize that finding a band when you aren’t already in a band is like finding a job when you are unemployed. If musicians in town are good enough to be pros, they are already too busy to do anything for fun.

Last year around this time, I had a creative breakup, which if you asked me, is way worse than a romantic breakup. It was as if another one of these rare collaborative connections appeared and then promptly vanished. I was disappointed.

So my new band is the robot I am typing on. It actually works pretty good, if you close your eyes, you can imagine what a real band might sound like. I’m slow with programming, so at this rate, it will take me another six years to produce my upcoming album: Music for Crickets.

Despite the increasing depth and breadth of 21st Century American Racism, you gotta love the comedic cruelty of the Internet when it actually manages to do some equalizing.

The woman identified as Dr. Jennifer Shulte had a positively schizophrenic affect when she called the cops on some African American folks who were barbequing, going from the voice of authority to weeping victim as soon as the cops arrived.

Many of us wanted to give this lady a knuckle sandwich but thankfully, the Internet did that for us.

Thank God for Photoshop! I’m particularly enjoying the memes that Bay Area musicians are passing around at her expense:

A Great Day in Harlem, 1958: “hello officer, people are playing flatted fifths.”

Whenever a friend has a mysterious condition, a lingering illness, or a series of crap interactions, I will often consult my friend Lola for advice. She has remotely cured my friend’s sore throats, broken a streak of shitty dates, or planted some wise seeds for my friends without even knowing them. Her nettle infusion recipe, which consists entirely of water and nettle leaf, cured my ravenous cravings for chocolate at night.

To describe Lola by her many professions doesn’t really encompass her: retired corrections officer, herbalist, energy worker, and folk healer don’t totally define her. Terms like artist, cook, photographer, designer, and a social media maven also technically apply, but these things all meld together in a cauldron of collaboration and connection that extends far beyond her individual skills.

Lola grew up in the Bay Area and her family is a patchwork quilt of Native American, Mexican Indian, and European origins. Her eager talent for plant-based medicine came from her mother.

The family would shudder to hear Lola’s mother referred to as a witch, she says. When Lola was young, she would hide her mom’s strange books and artifacts if her friends came over. “Why can’t we have real shampoo?” she would complain.

Even though these ancient recipes and spells were considered superstitious by many of her family members, they endured because they were so effective.

“Strangely when you disassociate as an adult from your family, you turn around one day and realize: oh yeah, I am my mother.” Lola explains.

“That’s universal,” I say.

She laughs, “right, so in this instance, I sort of realized that I’ve always been a witch. It’s a loaded term and I’ve had discussions with other practitioners and they say it’s a real privilege to use that word, and at the same time, a risk. There are some places even here in the states today, you call yourself a witch, you will get ostracized. Real harm can come to you.”

But let’s back up a bit in this witch origin story. Several years ago, Lola had a series of illnesses and nagging conditions that went unexplained by her doctors. Dissatisfied with the recommended treatment and lack of diagnosis, Lola went on what you might call a matriarchal medicine journey. She began actively seeking out other experts in her Sacramento community (of which there are many) and reaching out to her distant relatives. She not only healed herself, she found she was hungry to learn more.

In the spring of 2017, Lola was drawn to Mexico after seeking out a medicine woman or Mayan-Tzeltal curandera. Curanderismo is a folk healing tradition native to Latin America. Her lessons required a translator and when that wasn’t available, she simply intuited what her teacher was relaying about native plants. While she was traveling in this remote part of indigenous Mexico, she happened to get the results back from her ancestry test and was surprised to learn that a good deal of her genes come from Chiapas.

Not too long ago, we had a conversation about a term I heard Lola use: spiritual bypassing. I asked her to explain it within the context of her work and we got into a discussion about the term “Goddess.”

The prevalence of the term, where women refer to themselves and to each other as goddess is a little irksome to Lola.

MC: What does it mean to you?

LV: Well, it has to do with women and connection to an archetype. And I think there is value in that. Humans identify with archetypes, but so often, I see it as a removal from self, a diversion of energy. If I’m calling myself a goddess, it’s detracting from my humanness and my human experience.

It’s like life doesn’t seem fun enough, or beautiful enough, so I’m just going to skip ahead. To me, that’s damaging because you aren’t doing the fucking work. All pain and healing are within the self. It’s like playing dress-up: it has value and it allows us to explore. But you don’t stay playing dress up because then you are detached from real life.

MC: How is this dressing up distinct from ritual?

LV: Ritual is there to connect to the archetype. But I’m not lighting a candle and becoming goddess. I’m honoring the goddess as a way of connecting to the divine.

MC: So you miss out on that interplay between yourself and symbol that happens when you self-identify as a goddess without the ritual. What does it look like when you are respectfully resonating with that idea or stealing it? Do you have a clear idea in your mind?

LV: No. (more laughter) You just know it when you see it. There’s two ends of the spectrum, there are folks who are like, ‘stay in your lane’, and then there’s folks who are like, “why isn’t everything up for grabs?’ Extremes are unhealthy. So there is certainly a middle ground. That’s how all cultures have developed, through contact with others. Whether it’s through food or religion, there is this interconnectedness. It’s when you blatantly take something, claim it as yours, usually for profit, that’s appropriation. It’s not gaining knowledge, there’s no honor, and it’s not symbiotic.

MC: And you’re not making a contribution.

LV: Right. That’s when it’s obvious. I’m not so strict in my thinking that just because someone doesn’t belong to a native culture, that they have no business learning from it.

LV: I’ll use myself as an example. I woke up one day and thought, I’m supposed to get Reiki training.

I found this really wonderful Japanese woman who ended up as my teacher and I had a conversation about this because I was hesitant – I didn’t want to lift some other culture’s medicine. And her response was, no, every culture has their own healing modality, this is just a label we attach to this particular style. You’re not passing yourself off as being a Japanese Reiki Master.

So what I do is incorporate these traditional Japanese methods into my own healing heritage, my Native American Heritage, Curanderismo. It just serves as another way to access my healing energy, but I’m not workshopping as a Reiki Master. It’s just in my tool box.

MC: When you talk to skeptics who are firm believers in Western medicine, how do you describe what you do in a way they will understand?

LV: My first disclaimer is that it’s nothing new agey. It’s traditional healing that all of our ancestors did prior to the dawn of modern medicine. So it’s practical, approachable healing. It provides you with a sense of agency over your own wellness. Everyone has the ability to work with plant medicine and work with energy medicine to develop their own healing protocols.

Energy work in particular, provides a conduit to pick up on different patterns or rhythms in the body. Science is just a more exact vocabulary for understanding these practices. All that the laying on of hands is doing is detecting energy.

MC: So tell me about this word Magick.

LV: With patriarchal medicine, people end up removed from their own healing process because it makes them dependent. The knee-jerk reaction we have to anything painful is to seek outside ourselves for the solution. It’s a radical idea to go inward first.

“I am not your healer. You are your healer.”

I mean you get into a car accident, Reiki is not your first solution. You set the bone first, then you do the Reiki.

Western medicine has a place, but it shouldn’t be the default. Personal genius is something beyond intellect, it’s also about your reason to be; it’s your intuition. We all have gifts from birth, how much we realize them, where you are the most of service, at home in yourself, that’s Magick.

“Magick isn’t specific to culture: all cultures have these healing practices in their history.”

Folks of European descent are further removed from ancestral medicine earlier. So that’s where the cultural appropriation comes in so easily because people have a need to access this Magick. But what is accessible to them? Native American medicine, because it’s right there. It’s easier than tracing back to indigenous European ancestral medicine. And how beautiful would that be if people did that, the opportunity to learn from each other and share would be…

MC: Like an actual Thanksgiving.

LV: Right! And there’s no taking.

The other attraction to Magick (spelled with a ‘k’ to distinguish ceremonial healing ritual from the Blaines and the Copperfields) is that it was rooted in storytelling. Lola not only tells great stories, but she is a seeker of stories, surrounding herself with other healers, myth keepers, and dreamers.

The process of sharing for Lola has also evolved recently. Coming from the service industry, her online presence went from pictures of pretty food and drinks (I mean really pretty) to a kind of visual storytelling where ingredients are metaphors and a meal is medicine. Her Instagram account makes me hungry, but it also instructs me on seasonal ceremony. She reminds me to self-love with fire cider when I’m feeling the yuck coming on.

One time, I was talking to Lola on the phone while I was doing laundry and I found what could only be my ex-husband’s new girlfriend’s underwear that must have come home with my kid’s stuff. “Burn it,” Lola said without hesitation. “You don’t want that shit in your house.” I cannot tell you how healing it was to set those panties on fire.

This conversation was so useful to me because I regularly lose sight of my own power, I think we all do. We are distracted from our real capabilities and enticed by some dreamed up impossible goddess that doesn’t exist. We live in a world that really casts a deadly illusion, one where we at once disconnect from and hyper-glorify our bodies. We forget our planet and our ancestors.

Lola’s Magick is as simple, cheap and plentiful as the earth is round, and there is no “goddess” required. She also regularly joins forces with other practitioners and conducts workshops, ceremonies, and meals with traditional or seasonal themes. Connect with her on Instagram.

Rant alert. I’m not simply speaking to far-right zealots who place undue emphasis on individual effort and taunt welfare moms while they ignore how their party treats veterans. I’m also speaking to those on my side of the fence, those who have no idea what real struggle looks like. They are worse in some ways, because under their sympathy is a real resentment for poverty among their own.

I know this sounds caustic, but if you’ve never been on government assistance, let me take you through the average day of someone who is.

Note: A quick summation of the application process for Medi-Cal, Unemployment, CalFresh (Food Stamps), Calworks, Disability or assistance with childcare. It takes 2-3 days just to apply, and here’s why: the process is slow because the forms are not only copious, they are often badly phrased and confusing. And I am a writer. It requires standing in line, filling out hours worth of forms, personal data collection, and one unchecked box sets you right back to the beginning. There is often no human available to talk to at the many many contact numbers if you have questions beyond the information provided.

So let’s see what a typical day looks like for someone who is unemployed or underemployed and needs these services.

8am: You go through your normal routine feeding and getting the kid to school.

8:30 am: If you don’t have a computer, you go to the library or the EDD where you sign in and wait in line. You get an hour, and in that hour, you must register yourself into the system and enter all your employment history so the system can send you notices. Nevermind that no one actually gets hired this way anymore. You still get to do it so that the EDD can tell you are trying to get work.

The EDD customer service line actually tells you that inquiring about your claim will delay your benefits. The robot does not provide a general option to speak with an agent and all other options provide automated information. Then it hangs up on you. I shit you not.

9:45. You sit down to fill out your weekly EDD report online or by mail. These forms require you to track all the jobs you applied to, so you have to go back into your email, phone, look up addresses, etc. If you enter any of the information incorrectly, and I’m talking down to the period, it takes EDD a week to notify you, then several days after you correct the error to send you your check. Oh, and the IRS has the right to tax your weekly pittance, which is capped at $450/week. So that’s your rent (barely); where does the rest of it come from?

10:20 am: You need to go grocery shopping. First, you have to call the online system to see how much credit you have on your EBT card and then calculate out how long until you receive another payment so you know what to spend. It’s usually in the neighborhood of $350/month if you have one child and no income. You cannot buy a bottle of wine, but you can buy a liter of Coke. The EBT card is supposed to be more discreet, but of course, as soon as you select it, the cashier can see how you are paying and so can anyone in view of the display.

If you are an expecting mom, you have to take WIC (Women Infants and Children) vouchers into the grocery store. These vouchers all have specific brand names and quantities on them. So when you check out, you have 3-4 separate transactions. If you accidentally selected the 16 oz container instead of the 12 oz container, you either have to run back and try to find the right one, pissing off everyone in your line further, or you have to waste the voucher. Either way, you are totally humiliated by this process on a weekly basis. And grocery shopping takes considerably more time.

1:30 pm: You still need to make that appointment but it’s not like being covered through a private carrier where that card with your medical record number is good enough. Understand that at every turn, this system assumes you are lying about your situation, and so nearly every time you go to a doctor, you are somehow asked to verify again that you are on Medi-Cal, even if you’ve got the card. You will be required to report on the nature of the appointment so that Medi-Cal can categorize the visit. And if you are on Medi-Cal, you are lucky compared to many other states. I’ll skip the part where any serious health complications come up, that’s another blog.

The first available appointments for regular office visits are usually a couple weeks out. Plan ahead!

2:00pm: You finally have time to sit down and look for a job at the library. Again, you get an hour. In this time, you can probably apply for four jobs online if you hustle and have all your info in place. Those employers, by comparison, will receive thousands of resumes. Also bear in mind that if you don’t check this email later today, by tomorrow those employers may have already found someone.

3:00 pm: You pick up the kid from school because you cannot afford to pay for aftercare or afterschool activities. I’ll omit the conversation where you have to explain to your child why he or she can no longer play soccer or piano. The rest of your day is shot with chores and parenting even though your mind is elsewhere.

7:30 pm: The kid is in bed and you turn your attention toward your bills. With a fine tooth comb, you go over your finances again, seeing how much you are paying for everything, what you can do without, and give yourself a good guilt trip for any recent, non-essential purchases you might have made.

You opt to pay everyone a little because you heard somewhere that a company won’t send you to collections if you make a partial payment. You might find extraneous charges on your credit card with its already mounting debt. Corporations have a way of knowing when you are especially financially desperate and they like to take that time to apply random fees, jack your interest rates, increase your monthly charges and so forth. This normally would just be irritating, but in your currently strapped situation, this feels like death by a thousand papercuts. You spend many hours on the phone yelling at customer service agents and you can tell from the sound of their voices that they think you are crazy for making such a huge deal over $15.

9:45 pm: You are already in bed because you know that it’s not likely you will get a good night’s sleep and you have to get up and do all this over again tomorrow.

Now imagine this scenario compounded by a couple of weeks or months. Imagine having to prove on an almost daily basis that you need these services while trying to find work. Imagine that the idea of taking a lower paying job is even scarier because it will not cover your expenses but it will terminate all these services. Imagine the Sword of Damocles dangling over your head that you will lose your car, then your home and with it, everything you own.

Imagine what it would be like to go through all this and finally get an interview. You are no longer confident in your skills, even though you have many. You are no longer interfacing with coworkers in a professional setting daily and so your whole life feels personal and highly emotional. You cannot imagine that this company will hire you because you aren’t good enough. If you were good enough, you never would have become unemployed in the first place.

Understand that has nothing to do effort, that to find yourself unemployed in this heart-racing economy means driving for Uber, going to work for Handy, or Task Rabbit and that you will get raked over the coals for any income you make with these types of gigs when it’s tax time. Understand that more and more of us educated and skilled people will land here and that these meager safety net services are on their way to being nonexistent. Entitlements? I earned that unemployment. I earned my social security. I paid taxes and I will pay more if this tax bill goes through.

It’s not even worth saying, but I need the catharsis today: Fuck you Paul Ryan, Fuck You, Mitch McConnell and Fuck all you old, white, so-rich-you’ll-never-spend-it-in-your-lifetime assholes. When we no longer have anything to spend, you do realize the pot will run dry, right? I guess by then it won’t matter. You’ll own everything.

A new male friend and I were chatting last night and I was describing to him how the waterfall effect of the Harvey Weinstein revelations has affected my relationships. He made a flip comment about it being “the new thing these days.” I was flabbergasted and replied that it was not a trend from where I sit; it’s the beginning of a revolution. He apologized for the comment, but I don’t think he had any sense of the implications.

This is a dark and confusing time for all of us where bedrock social norms no longer apply and I have observed a lot of bewildered behavior from men as a result of this steady stream of reports that men behave badly on a regular basis.

To try and put the MeToo thing in context, I’ll use myself as an example. At the age of fifteen, I lost my virginity to a boy I had met two hours before. He was one of the popular boys, I had a huge crush and his sudden attention caught me completely off guard. He and his friends convinced me and my girlfriends to ditch and go to someone’s house nearby.

I had no idea that once he got me in a room alone he was going to try and go “all the way.” It’s an understatement to say that I didn’t know how to say no to this boy that I really liked and I was the last girl in my group to remain a virgin. I was so confused and ashamed that even when my girlfriends tried to barge the room, I told them to get out. After he was done, he told me not to tell anyone.

By the end of the school day, everyone knew and one girl saw me in the hall and started screaming his name, imitating me having sex with him. He called me that night and asked me why I told everybody, that he was talking to this other girl and now I had wrecked his chances with her.

Boys who had ignored me all year were suddenly swarming. I kept a brave face and pretended to my friends like I was in control of all this, but everyday, I came close to running away just so I didn’t have to face going to school.

So when these stories started to come out, it may have broadsided men, but no woman I know was surprised. The thing that surprised us was that there are actual consequences for this behavior. When we say #MeToo, we don’t mean once. We mean this is the toxic atmosphere we live in. We mean predators of all stripes count on a complicit system.

So I direct this list of action items specifically to men in this new territory. If you want to know how to be part of the solution, here are a few places you can start:

1. Be brave. I’m not talking about the kind of brave where you save a baby from a burning building. You guys are pretty good at that. But frankly, you suck at having emotionally vulnerable conversations with the women and men in your lives. It’s not your fault, we can squarely place the blame on the patriarchy, but you still have work to do. It’s time to have some tough conversations, to confront our collective complicity. Be ready to be wrong about some things. Be ready to change your mind and develop more awareness.

Sacramentos’ Women’s March, January 20, 2017.

2. Do an inventory and clean house. My brother and I had a profound conversation a few days ago. There was someone in our midst who required unfriending and I took the opportunity to point out to him that he had crossed a line himself. He apologized to me and made amends in a way that I thought was really brave. Men should know that an apology for even a mild transgression has enormous healing potential for women who regularly deal with this onslaught and go their entire lives without ever hearing the words “I’m sorry.” Think back to the times that a woman told you that your friend did something gross. Did you blow her off? Do you still hang out with that guy? If so, maybe a conversation is in order.

And if you know someone who has a considerable track record of bad boundaries with women, you’ve got two choices: decide he can improve and work with him, or disengage. Does this seem like a tough choice? Well, it is. And we do it all the time.

I know this is going to make some of my loved ones uncomfortable, but it enrages me to this day that they still have my ex-husband to dinner when he catfished me on the Internet, hacked my cloud, and posted revenge porn. When I told them all this as it was unfolding, my friends would shake their heads and say, “wow, that’s fucked up.” And then two weeks later, he would stay the weekend at their house with his latest girlfriend.

Again, my brother said he’d witnessed a lot of shitty behavior from my ex and he sees now that he could’ve said something. By saying that, my brother showed me that he’s my advocate.

3. Listen without interrupting. I read a great piece in the Washington Post about how at the beginning of the Obama administration, there were two women in his cabinet and 2/3 of his staff were men. Numerous studies have been conducted in the business world that show men are more likely to interrupt women in a professional setting, and more likely to take credit for their ideas. Interrupting is a subtle but tactical method of debasement and so these female Obama staffers started to employ a countermeasure they referred to as “amplifying”. If one of them got cut off, the other would circle back and open up the opportunity for the first woman to complete her thought. They would also echo each other’s ideas by attributing: “Going back to Valerie’s idea…” It must have worked because at the end of Obama’s second term, his staff was comprised of 50% women.

Men need to do this for women too.

4. Take responsibility for the ways that the patriarchy has benefited you. To say “I’m not most men,” is akin to white folks saying to African American people, “I didn’t enslave you, so racism has nothing to with me.” No one wants you to personally apologize for racism or sexism (unless you have behaved in a racist or sexist way), but understand that you live in a world that was designed for men and by men. Understand that women are just gaining agency over their lives for the first time in the last few thousand years and if it seems like we have a hair trigger about language or tone, we do. We’ve gotten punched in the face since the dawn of Western Civilization.

5. Stop minimizing. This one is also subtle, but it has powerful consequences and it’s one step away from gaslighting. Matthew Remski writes about this in a brutally honest blog post titled On Minimization as a Patriarchal Reflex: “My minimizing reflex is mobilized in an instant. The speed is a clue. My partner gives me feedback. Whatever the content is I instantly reframe it so I can feel like it’s either personal attack on me, or — and this is harder to see – as a problem that I am now responsible for, on behalf of someone who I instantly tell myself is overreacting. Both reframes are designed to render the incoming data dismissible.”

In the context of sexual misconduct, it’s harmful for men to point out that what Louis CK did isn’t the same as what Harvey Weinstein did. it’s true, Louis didn’t lure women into his hotel rooms and rape them, but these are part and parcel of the same sick system whereby women have to make life decisions based on some man’s out of control libido. Let’s not split hairs. Let’s just give their jobs to women.

6. Call out shitty male behavior in groups. A male friend of mine described sitting at lunch with a bunch of male co-workers when a heavy woman walked by wearing athletic pants. The men took the opportunity to complain that she didn’t have the body to wear those pants and my friend said, “Hey, wait a minute. She gets to wear whatever she wants. You don’t have to be into it, but you don’t get to decide what she wears because of what she looks like. That’s her choice.” He wasn’t mean and he wasn’t righteous, but because of the way he said it, he instantly called these guys’ misogyny to the mat and they retracted.

No one gets a pass for hating anymore.

American Girl in Italy by Ruth Orkin

7. If you have questions, don’t pose them on social media. A new acquaintance of mine did something ingenious on Facebook, a platform she uses for political discourse and organization. She asked the men on her feed to bow out the discussion for the purposes of the post and then posted questions from men so they could remain anonymous. This was a really effective way (as far as I could tell) to allow men to listen to a range of female responses without starting a flame war. If this option isn’t available to you, consider approaching one female friend in person and start the conversation with “I need help understanding this.”

We are in the middle of a reckoning. All these actions take practice. They take effort and they will necessarily make for some discomfort. But guess what? Women have been uncomfortable this whole time!

It gives me tremendous hope that our voices are starting to be heard. We will no longer be ignored, paid off, silenced or otherwise punished for someone else’s actions. There is a groundswell happening, an indirect response to having a predator in chief.

If any one group is capable of turning the ugly turmoil we are seeing, it’s women. Men only stand to benefit from empowering us. And it’s time. We’ve all waited long enough.

The average stay at the crisis center where I teach yoga is 30 days, and since it’s an opt-in facility, there are no gates, searches or hospital gowns. When I go into my group meeting every Tuesday at 1:00, there are usually some familiar faces and some new patients.

There is also a broad range of mental illnesses ranging from suicidal depression to schizophrenia, OCD to psychosis. Group is a required part of the program and when many of them come in and hear they are about to practice yoga, the wall goes up.

So I start each class by saying, “Do what you can do today. If that’s just sitting still and listening, that counts. If you can do the breathing piece, even better. You still benefit from being in the room.”

The relief is palpable and more often than not, being in the room leads them to participate. That same reticent patient will likely put in even more effort at the next class. Some of the residents actually get really excited about the prospect of yoga because the results are empiric. That’s why it’s called yogic science; they see it for themselves.

I try to apply some of that spirit to my own practice. It’s hard with juggling a kid and multiple jobs and creative projects and my own mental resistance. Mornings are unusually accompanied by an internal groan, rather than a chipper “yay!”

But just asking myself, “what can I do today?” opens me up to more than doing nothing at all.

One of my teachers told me that when she was having a mental block against practicing, her teacher said, just roll out your mat everyday. Eventually, you’ll step onto it. She said just that act compelled the next act: breathing. Which compelled the next act: moving.

Yoga is no different than any other progression: there are days when nothing gets done. Acknowledging this lets my students apply what some teachers like to call, “imperfect action.” They are freed from the mental burden of having to perform. In a headspace where even the smallest demand feels unconquerable, and an environment where so much of their day is regimented, I give them permission to do whatever they can do.

Another thing that seems to help is giving my students tricks. I teach them easy poses, stretches, even awareness techniques that might come in handy during a bout of rage or extreme anxiety in a public place. I tell them why these actions help, what is going on in the brain, and it gives the smallest effort credibility.

I get anxious in public places on occasion, and I have bouts of rage too. In the moment, it can be difficult to think strategically, but that’s why we call it practice. With enough repetition, we can automate these tricks. Hopefully, we achieve the clarity to label them and activate the antidote. Or at least try.

Yoga is not a silver bullet. Meditation takes a certain amount of stillness and diligence that many of us, for whatever reason, don’t have. Sometimes it doesn’t work.

But to see these patients go from negative and lethargic to awake and relaxed in the course of 35 minutes, I’ll just say the practice continues to prove its worth. Just keep trying, and one of the valves will relieve the pressure.

Alright, growing up in Los Angeles made me a sucker for hiphop, underground hiphop specifically, that nursed from the veins of truly great jazz. It’s phenomenal to me that the tech has fed the human capacity for sound, Rob Turner manages to mimic the crisp drum tracks only previously capable on Logic.

It’s not just the precision that these dudes execute, it’s also the inviting melodies, the easy phrasing that feels so effortless and free. It all works just as well with Autumn, I recommend:

Yesterday started out great: I quit my job and almost like the universe was rewarding me, my friend Mike sent me a text asking if I wanted to see Neil Diamond at the Golden 1 Arena in downtown Sacramento.

A quick side note: After much reasonable protesting, Sacramento now has its very own, taxpayer funded, shiny new arena. I was ambivalent for many reasons, but I have to say that unlike other arenas, the acoustics are actually quite decent. The only other show I’ve been to at the Golden 1 Center was Electric Christmas, a hipster rock, millennials-only affair put on every winter by local radio station 94.7.

So the first thing we noticed last night was that every section in the stadium was open and the place was packed to the nosebleeds with avid fans.

When the band took the stage and the lights dropped, a giant 3D Diamond appeared, spinning and refracting images of Neil from the past. The diamond screen remained throughout the performance, lighting up and bouncing images that supported the songs.

The bandstand split with a walk down the center and when Neil emerged and started to come down front and center, Mike couldn’t resist saying, “Oh that’s nice, they gave him the old people ramp”.

Neil is 76, but he sings with the same voice as he did in 1976: his pipes are undiminished by time, his rich, sultry tone and phrasing as swoon-worthy as ever.

He launched into Solitary Man and this crowd that easily had 20-30 years on the previous show I’d seen, erupted with such glee, it was hard to believe.

Diamond had a bit of Elvis in him in the younger days, he borrowed some showmanship from the King for sure. But his brand of flash seems positively tame compared with younger, more modern performers. His charisma is so powerful that all he had to do was lift a hand beatifically and the audience would rise to their feet as though they were at a megachurch.

A couple songs in, he strolled to the right side of the stage and the far right section cheered so vehemently, Neil said, “these folks are the most lively in the building, so I’m going to stay over here for this one.” Then he sang the opening lines of Love on the Rocks. He continued to tease the other sections by pointing to the right and saying, “you going to beat these folks?”

His easy banter and playfulness cut up the often wistful themes of his ballads and he undulated between up tempo goodies like I’m a Believer and lonely I am, I Said. He is still songwriting and he managed to tuck some newer tunes into the set, one called Dry Your Eyes about the Manchester bombing.

One of my favorite moments was Brooklyn Roads, accompanied by diamond-shaped, grainy Super8 footage of his family. A line I deeply related to:

Mama’d come to schoolAnd as I’d sit there softly crying
Teacher’d say, “He’s just not tryingHe’s got a good head if he’d apply it”But you know yourselfIt’s always somewhere else

I built me a castleWith dragons and kingsAnd I’d ride off with themAs I stood by my windowAnd looked out on thoseBrooklyn Roads1

Diamond also did something I hadn’t seen a rock star of his caliber do before: to introduce the band, he let each one of his musicians play a short, solo song of their own choosing. His two back up singers are sisters, and his guitarist of 40 years, Richard Bennett, who helped write Forever in Blue Jeans, was on stage with his son, Nick, also on guitar. These little showcases gave him a chance to encourage and publically thank the folks that support him.

I’m not exaggerating when I say that the entire auditorium stood and danced for Sweet Caroline, except maybe those in wheelchairs.If there was some way to gauge the energy in the room, this crown far exceeded the hipster extravaganza I mentioned. By a long shot.

The finale was, of course, Coming to America, a tune I used to see as a bit nationalistic, but again, he managed to strike the perfect tone; the diamond screen shone old black and white images of immigrants boarding boats, waving happily from the deck, hoping for a new life. As the son of Jewish immigrants from Poland, it was a loving gesture, and a reminder of what actually makes America great.

Neil Diamond performed for over two hours, with such obvious relish, such candor and very little of the bravado that made him so famous. His voice was eclipsed only by the sheer poetic vulnerability of his lyrics and that spaghetti western style that has become his signature.

I had my doubts about the Golden 1 arena, but last night, I was so grateful for this massive, shiny venue because it was filled to the brim with eager fans who spent far less time on their phones and far more time cheering and dancing: daughters and dads, grandparents and grandchildren. And after 50 years of writing and performing, Neil Diamond deserves a golden arena.